“…What if there were smart glasses that didnt make you look like a techno cyborg jerk?” - Intel's Vaunt smart glasses won't make you look like a Glasshole. Dieter Bohn got an exclusive look at Intel's latest gadget. By shining a low-powered laser into your retina, the glasses can get all sorts of information without pulling out your phone. UPDATE: In April 2018, Intel ceased development on the Vaunt smart glasses project. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnfwClgheF0

"...What do you get when you mix Google Glass and EEG? That’s the question that the people at Ottawa-based Personal Neuro are on their way to answering. Given the buzz around how Google Glass can be used in healthcare, and our longstanding interest in brain-computer interface, we took the opportunity to speak with Personal Neuro’s CEO, Steve Denison, about his company and what they’re building."

"..A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give weight in one's life...There is an urge to say, 'I was here, I saw this, and it mattered to me." - Alain de Botton - Stendhal Syndrome."

"It's a Wednesday night, and I'm turning heads on the sidewalk. People are slowing halfway down the block as I approach. They're whispering about me as I walk through the room. Strangers are watching me, sometimes even stopping me on the street.

Why? Because I'm wearing Google Glass. And I hate it.

I shouldn't feel this way. I like new technology -- I've been a tech reporter at The Washington Post for more than three years. And I admire the vision of technology that Google promises Glass can offer: a device that lets you keep track of e-mails, texts and other messages in a seamless way -- all through a screen that's perched just over your right eye."

"....SelfScreens covers the latest in all things wearable technology. We do it all - from being the first to find the latest and greatest Glassware (via our site GoogleGlassFans), to providing you with easy-to-follow how-to guides to unlock your Android Wear device's full potential. "

"...Google Glass makes it easy for wearers to surreptitiously take pictures or video of unknowing subjects. That's caused more than a few people to ask: What does Glass mean for our privacy? Now Congress, too, wants answers."

"...."The question is, 'Will Google Glass become mainstream and popular?' I guess I am worried that we have already made that decision. It has already been precluded by the question of whether we will allow a few large private technology companies like Google to determine by decree how we behave in contemporary society. And the answer seems to be yes."

"...I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere down the line this [ Google Glass ] will be the norm....or whatever the mobile technology is." - 2 April 2014 9:24AM AEST

Mitch Jackson provides an account of how he perceives Google Glass playing out across the legal profession in his state and perhaps across the United States more broadly. Mitch also provides feedback on a range of far ranging questions that included:

1. Mitch, which part of the US do you call home?2. In your email signature you identify as a trial lawyer with 28 years experience. How is it then that you have identified as a #glassexplorer and what does that do for your credibility as a Lawyer?3. There have been some very public events of late that expose both the good and the bad sides of #glass - what do you consider is the difference?4. Have you or do you envisage in the the near future dealing with cases that involve #glass legally in any way?5. Where dont you wear #glass ?6. What has your Family reaction been to #glass ? Rotary ? your sports associations?7. When you say your involved with social media and #googleglass in your G+ profile do you see these as separate entities or mutually complementary?8. #glass is at this point still a relatively unknown phenomena here in Australasia. What do you consider will be the impact of #glass more broadly on the professional communities across Australia?9. Given that society has changed significantly since the inception of the Internet do you have any ideas on what likely changes might happen with the functions and form of #googleglass in the next iterations before it's public release?10. What is the likely shifts in law and governance that we are going to have to tackle as a Society and internationally or even perhaps across all of humanity as a result of #glass ?﻿

I've invited Cathie to come to Canberra, Australia and connect with the public at the INSPIRE Centre, University of Canberra as part of the 2014 #glassmeetups . These blended face-to-face and online events provide an opportunity for discussions as to what other areas of the medical, healthcare, aged care industries might have in development or even in conceptual proof of concept such as the depiction below.

"Keeping track of your emails and staying on top of your calendar might be hard enough, but for American software developer Chris Dancy, life doesn’t feel complete without several hundred data sets about his life being fed to him simultaneously at all times.

...

Today, Dancy is “travelling light”, only wearing seven devices: above his eyes sits the unmistakable horizontal bar of a Google Glass headset, which records everything he sees, while around his neck hangs a Memoto narrative camera, which takes a picture every 30 seconds for good measure. On one wrist is a Pebble watch, which sends him alerts from his two smartphones, while around the other is a Fitbit Flex, tracking his movement and sleep patterns 24 hours a day. And then there’s the stuff you can’t see: a Blue HR heart rate monitor strapped to his chest, a BodyMedia fitness tracker around his upper arm and, lurking beneath his waistband, a Lumoback posture sensor – “which vibrates when I slouch,” he beams.

“Right now I feel pretty naked,” he says, “because I can’t control the room.” Back at home in Denver, Colorado, all the data from these devices feeds directly into his ambient environment, which automatically adjusts according to his mood and needs.

“The house knows my behaviours,” he says. “If I get really stressed out and don’t sleep well, when I wake up the light is a certain colour, the room a particular temperature, and certain music plays. My entire life is preconditioned based on all this information that I collect in real time.”

...

“All this stuff [...] needs to be in my clothing. Why can’t your shoes have haptic sensors in them, so if you’re walking you don’t need GPS – your shoe just vibrates left or right? I think this low-friction, ambient feedback is really the future, but for now we have to strap all this stuff on and look silly.”

...

Dancy is perhaps the most extreme exponent [of] a community dedicated to tracking and archiving every aspect of their known existence. But might others also be watching them too?

“That’s a very real concern,” says John Weir, director of the Wearable Technology Show. “You can quantify yourself as much as you want, but a lot of that is fed back on the web, and a lot of the companies now hold immense amounts of data on their customers. Particularly with medical applications, where people will hopefully be feeding stuff back to their doctors, the ownership of data and privacy is going to become a big issue.”

Dancy shares these concerns, but is more optimistic about the beneficial power of mastering our data, as long as we stop giving it away. “We don’t have a sharing problem, we have a data intimacy problem,” he says. “It’s urgent that people look at the data they are creating and giving away – so much of it can be used to make our lives better, rather than lining the pockets of mega corporations.”

In reality, few have the software skills to ensure their personal data is not being harvested against their will, so maybe it’s for the best that most wearable tech still makes you look like an extra from Star Trek. For some, that’s a useful deterrent from ever wearing it."

1. Mark, I have you down in my G+ circles as a colleague. I note you have 290 followers. How have you managed to keep such a quiet profile amidst your incredible achievements?2. You claim not to be a #glassexplorer or at least not part of that online community. What do you call your developments then with #glass or at least with the wider sub-sets of alternative providers?3. I met with you at ISMAR13 in Adelaide, South Australia. Shortly after that event another occurred in the same university with Professor Andrew Goldsmith, Cybercrimes. What do you see as the nexus between augmented reality (AR) and that of unmanned aerial systems? (UAS)4. Christchurch is a lovely part of the world. Given you've just returned from Israel what do you consider to be the hotbeds of technology development in the world at present?5. What does the term privacy mean to you? 6. In a world of big data, open data and the ripples still subsiding from the NSA and Snowden case what do you see as the greatest challenge for those who choose to route their quantified selves through servers in other countries (the cloud)? Is wearable technology responsible in some way for a shift in humanity?7. The #glassroom - tell us who takes your C22: The Glass Class: Designing Wearable Interfaces and why ?8. I take it your familiar with +Thad Starner - it appears 'empathetic' appears in both of your current discourses - can you tell us more about what you mean by using augmented reality to create empathetic experiences?9. Is artificial intelligence (AI) set to leapfrog wearables as the revolution or do we have to wait and see #glass sweep across Australasia first?10. Will #glass cause revolt, upturn apple-carts, challenge stereotypes, ubiquitously slip amongst the tools of the K-2 educator? What the key challenges that we face as humanity with #glass or is this set to be a US based phenomena only?

"...On a chilly morning in early January, I joined a hundred students in a lecture hall on the Georgia Tech campus for a class called Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing. The professor, Thad Starner, looked up at his audience of aspiring programmers, industrial designers, roboticists, and user-interface specialists. He is forty-four, with a boyish face and sideburns that yearn for the 1990s. He wore, as he often does, a black T-shirt and black jeans. “In this class we’re going to talk about four main things,” he said. “Privacy, power and heat, networking on- and off-body, and interface. Every time you make any decision on any four of these dimensions, it’s going to affect the others. It’s always a balancing act.”